About a week ago, my bank asked me if I wanted a new plastic card, named Moneo. This card would be dedicated to small purchases, like newspapers or a french baguette. My bank also asked for 10 euros per year for the card...
Carol Matlack reports from Paris
Once again, France is hearing the siren song of a new technology. On Nov. 6, Parisians will be invited to take a big step toward a cash-free economy when a group of French banks introduces a microchip-embedded smart card designed for making small, everyday purchases. The e-cash card, dubbed Moneo, can be loaded with $20 to $100 worth of credit from your bank and recharged when depleted. The cards have been introduced over the past few months in several French cities, where shoppers are already using them for an estimated $1.5 million in transactions each month.
True, e-cash has a ready base of support: bankers and merchants eager to cut down on the labor and expense of processing small transactions made with checks and bank debit cards. Trouble is, e-cash already has been tested elsewhere in Europe and the U.S. -- and it has mostly flopped. In Germany, banks have distributed e-cash cards to an estimated 50 million customers, but few use them.
So, if it flopped elsewhere in europe -- except Belgium -- why would it work in France?
France could prove fertile territory for e-cash. For one thing, French consumers seem to hate carrying cash. For years, they were the world's most prolific check-writers -- until French banks, swamped with check-processing costs and a growing bad-check problem in the 1990s, persuaded them to switch to debit cards.
Still, Moneo backers aren't naive enough to expect a cashless society. Even after three or four years, they project that no more than 15% of French consumers will use Moneo. "It's going to take a long time to develop," says Pierre Fersztand, director of the Billétique Monétique Services (BMS), the French banking consortium. "We are not going to replace pocket change overnight." Debit cards didn't catch on overnight, either, so who knows? With enough buzz, a Moneo card might someday be what every Frenchman uses to buy his café au lait and croissant in the morning.
Personally, I don't think Moneo will be successful except if it's free.
For more details -- in french -- check the official Moneo website.
Sources: Carol Matlack, Karim Djemai and David Fairlamb, BusinessWeek Magazine, November 11, 2002 Issue
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